Cat Tien National Park: An Outdoor Adventure in South Vietnam

Finally able to use some of my accumulated frequent flyer miles (40,000 on Asiana), I scheduled an impromptu flight down to Ho Chi Minh City to see my girlfriend for the second time in a month. Needless to say, she was excited, and she planned an adventurous weekend in Cat Tien National Park, about 150km from Saigon.

Excited to see real primates!

A traveler to Vietnam must understand that the “highways” in the country are quite slow, and distances take much longer to travel than in more developed countries. For us, this journey took about 3.5 to 4 hours each way, meaning we were only traveling about 40km/hr.

We meant to depart early from Saigon but we had an oh-so-nice! boutique hotel (I Am Vietnam — highly recommend) and we wanted a little extra time to enjoy the room and the lavish breakfast. By the time we finally reached the bus depot we had missed the direct 10:30am passenger van to Cat Tien (no A/C, I am told), so my girlfriend quickly improvised and found an 11am air-conditioned van traveling north that could drop us off about 25km from the park. The rest of the journey we would complete by taxi (400,000 VND). This is not something that an English-speaking tourist would be able to figure out, though. The journey was crammed full of people in a van that inconceivably kept picking up passengers en route, even though by all appearances it was quite full. Definitely not a luxurious mode of transport — I don’t know how one could do this without A/C.

We finally reached our lodging at about 3pm, the overpriced and uninspiring Forest Floor Lodge, about 1.5km from the park headquarters (thankfully there was a golf cart to transport us). We had missed our planned tour for the afternoon so we borrowed a couple bicycles and rode back to the HQ area for an early dinner, while a late shower burst outside. Our Night Safari tour at 6pm was “rain or shine”, so we bought some ponchos and sat on the top of a van that drove us out a bit into the wilderness. An extravagant adventure full of exotic animals it was not — we saw one snake and several packs of deer. The Vietnamese were fascinated by the deer … such common animals they are in American suburbs, but in Vietnam these are a real rural treat!

The hiking trail in the forest was a little difficult to bike on!

The second day was our big outdoor day. We woke up early (the power returned to life at 6:30am), ate a quick breakfast and took a boat to the Dao Tien Primate Rescue Center. This is an educational reserve where golden-cheek gibbons and other primates are placed after being rescued from illegal captivity in Vietnam or other countries. These animals need to be returned to full health and need to learn the skills to survive in the wild.

Later in the morning we rented bicycles and drove to the Crocodile Lake — 10km on a rocky road and 4km on a difficult and narrow trail in the forest… we hiked the last 1km to the lake. I was already exhausted, sweaty and hot after reaching the lake, which had no crocodiles or birds to see during the mid-day sun. Some men who were filming a wildlife documentary cooked us pork and we rejuvenated ourselves for the long ride back to Park HQ. My girlfriend and I sang songs to lift our spirits in the empty woods, and after a scary short boat ride and a scary 25km on the back of a speeding motorbike through the rural roads near Cat Tien, we finally reached the comfort of a sleeper bus that drove us the rest of the slow way back to Ho Chi Minh City. We watched American action movies like “Expendables 3” and Vietnamese-American music videos, and it was great to lay down flat to catch a nap.

Already exhausted, and we're not even all the way to Crocodile Lake yet

A lazy Monday in Ho Chi Minh City capped off my trip, and I slept as best I could on the red-eye back to Seoul for Tuesday morning. Someday I hope to be rid of those red-eye flights!

Nha Trang: Easy-going Vietnamese Beach Town

With a steady Vietnamese girlfriend now, I am becoming much more of a regular in Vietnam. I scheduled two relatively impromptu trips to see her recently … fortunately there are many direct flights to Vietnam from Seoul.

Po Nagar Tower looks a bit like Angkor Wat in Cambodia

For the Buddha’s Birthday 3-day holiday weekend at the end of May I flew to Nha Trang, a Russian-dominated beach community in southern Vietnam. The international airport there is certainly the smallest I have visited in Vietnam, and I was a little uneasy landing close to midnight on a flight full of Koreans (who do not need a visa to visit Vietnam, lucky bastards). The visa on arrival office was closed when I arrived, which brought a momentary pang of panic to me, but thankfully an immigration officer eventually showed up and processed my paperwork — overall the time to exit the airport was still less than in Ho Chi Minh City. I was happy to have mastered the murky Vietnam visa system once again, and to receive a big hug from my girlfriend waiting on the other side of security.

The good thing about traveling with a local in Vietnam is that renting a motorbike is no hassle. Though it’s a little strange to be a man hugging a woman from behind on the motorbike, rather than the other way around, I would rather have that than trying to learn the obscure rules of the road in Vietnam. The Vietnamese don’t seem to mind.

The motorbike tour of Nha Trang was rather uneventful, as there aren’t many tourist-worthy attractions. We stopped at Nha Trang Cathedral (my girlfriend loves churches), walked around the Long Son Pagoda (with a large Buddha statue), took in the Po Nagar Tower (built by the ancient Cham people, and resembled Cambodia’s Angkor Wat), and stumbled around the rocks on the Hon Chong Promontory (a fine picture-taking destination with the Nha Trang coastline). It was a relaxing May day, hot but dry with the occasional friendly cloud to shield us from the intense tropical sunlight.

The rocks on Hon Chong Promontory are relaxing!

The second day featured a boat tour to nearby islands off the coastline. The vessel was an old crammed wooden design, I muttered a small prayer to myself that the boat would not sink that day — taking my valuable electronics into the sea. At Mun Island my girlfriend and I did a little snorkeling together… coral reef here was bare and dull but it did make for some good swim time (requiring *strong* sunscreen). Lunch was served onboard and there was music time afterwards… a guitar, drums, and a microphone. It was karaoke time and as the only Westerner onboard (there were also Vietnamese, Koreans, and some Indians), I was asked to sing a song. Surprisingly “Hotel California” is well known in Asia … and the crowd loved it! This was followed by “happy hour” on the water, and I forgot to reapply sunscreen, leading to my first sunburn on my shoulders in some time … tsk tsk.

Day 3 in Nha Trang was a visit to Thap Ba Hot Mineral Spring mud bath resort. Don’t want to get dirty, you are thinking? Think again! I was skeptical too, but this place rocked. The mud baths are warm and relaxing and make a great day out for couples. Once you have had about 20-30 minutes of mud, you get to clean off in nice, gushing showers. This place also has swimming pools to clean off further, and a large seating area to enjoy a nice afternoon with a cocktail.

For Day 4, we flew back to Ho Chi Minh City to visit the Saigon Opera House and catch the À Ố Show (pronounced “ahhh! ohhh!”), a cirque performance full of baskets, bamboo, acrobatics, and Vietnamese working songs. It is pretty simple, short, and not really worth the inflated ticket price, but it was still an entertaining performance. If you are accustomed to the amazing acts in Cirque du Soleil, À Ố will seem a bit like a college drama performance in comparison, but it is a good diversion for a tourist’s trip to Saigon — it is certainly a unique performance.

After the performance with the cast of À Ố Show